


those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams

by downtheroadandupthehill



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: His Dark Materials AU, M/M, complete with canonical deaths, daemon AU, set in a vaguely canonical world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downtheroadandupthehill/pseuds/downtheroadandupthehill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Enjolras trails lazy kisses along his collarbone, Grantaire can only wonder how it came to this. Perhaps he is an unwelcome and necessary distraction, a vessel for a god’s more mortal needs. He buries his face into the other man’s shoulder, allows patterns to be traced upon his shoulder blades as though this is something real.</p>
<p>They curl in the shadows of not-yet-morning, their daemons on the floor beside them, cuddled into the mess of their humans’ clothes. Selene’s pink tongue grooms at the fox’s fur, while Alienor twitches her tail in a vague imitation of irritation. Grantaire lets his arm drape off the bed to touch his daemon, the familiar knobs in the arch of her spine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams

When Grantaire awakes, he does not know where he is. A warm weight at his feet alights, abandons him, and he is alone. He is so rarely truly alone, but his head is pounding and it might be a relief.

There are footsteps upstairs—the clatter of hard-soled boots—and Grantaire recalls the barricade. A bottle of wine at his side that he reaches for, instinctively, but already empty.

The reek of blood lingers in the air, and he must try not to be sick all over the Musain’s floor.

There’s a familiar tugging in his breast, pulling him upright and up, as he starts to climb the splintered stairs.

After all this time, he feels like they must have been ready for this.  _She_  is, at the very least, and the best he can do is follow along behind as he always has.

…..

Selene looks more like a stray than a daemon. She is mangy and in the winter Grantaire can count her ribs in the brushes of his fingertips. His daemon is all matted orange fur—because shehates baths, of course she does—and sharpened claws and judgmental eyes, and he loves her to pieces anyway. Selene is his other half,  _my better half_ , he calls her fondly until she sinks her claws into his wrist and climbs into his waistcoat for the warmth of his chest.

She is mistaken for a stray, as they walk through the filthy streets of Paris in search of a friend with a pipe. She is angry with him, for seeking the relief of the drug in the first place, and weaves among ankles and feet, while he stumbles along behind. Each knows that the other won’t wander too far away. But his darling Selene is ugly and small, and neither of them should be surprised when they feel a sharp kick to her abdomen and the grit of mud in her fur and a blooming bruise in the shape of a boot because it would’ve happened eventually anyway.

Grantaire collapses against the nearest building, brick scraping against his elbows and his heart in his throat  _pounding pounding_  gasping for breath.

He is late to that evening’s meeting, staggering into their upstairs room with a quivering Selene in his arms, clutching her closer than his friends had ever seen him do before.

While Enjolras speaks that night, his sweet red fox comes to Grantaire’s side, although she is all-too-careful not to touch.

_Her name is Alienor_ , Selene supplies, and Grantaire finally loosens his hold on her so she can leap gracefully to the ground. She does not leave his side as they breathe into one another’s faces, and Alienor moves to nose gently at Selene’s injury. His daemon is a softer set of Enjolras’s many virtues, and she is able to afford to illustrate their affection.

Enjolras does not falter as he speaks, though afterwards he greets his daemon with a stroke of his thumb between her eyes, how he knows she likes best, and a whispered question in her ear.

…..

When Enjolras trails lazy kisses along his collarbone, Grantaire can only wonder how it came to this. Perhaps he is an unwelcome and necessary distraction, a vessel for a god’s more mortal needs. He buries his face into the other man’s shoulder, allows patterns to be traced upon his shoulder blades as though this is something real.

They curl in the shadows of not-yet-morning, their daemons on the floor beside them, cuddled into the mess of their humans’ clothes. Selene’s pink tongue grooms at the fox’s fur, while Alienor twitches her tail in a vague imitation of irritation. Grantaire lets his arm drape off the bed to touch his daemon, the familiar knobs in the arch of her spine.

“Are you sure that you are well?” Enjolras murmurs the question. They’ve stopped pretending at sleep.

Grantaire nods, closes his eyes.

“In our youth—” And Grantaire snorts at that, because thinking of Enjolras as a child is nearly impossible. “—Combeferre and I touched one another’s daemons, made an experiment out of it. It was not unpleasant.” He adds, fondly, “And Alienor stopped changing, after that.”

Grantaire considers that Enjolras might be trying to arouse his jealousy, at that. Instead, he says: “Yes, and that’s rather different than having one’s daemon kicked across the street.”

Enjolras agrees, and his thumb and forefinger circle tight around Grantaire’s wrist. Their daemons settle more closely together, and Grantaire feels a rush of warmth as Alienor nips at the tear in his daemon’s ear.

…..

He doesn’t mean to hear it, but he does, after another meeting is over and the chief, the guide, and the center return to their tables to sip at their watered wine. Enjolras sits near the window, and opens a book—a green ribbon in the middle, marking his place—and Grantaire is watching him. But Selene has focused her attention on Combeferre and Courfeyrac, sharing a table in the corner of the room. Courfeyrac is troubled, a rare event for him, and his daemon sets her head in his lap, looking equally doleful. They are all solemn, even Courfeyrac, at the suddenness of Lamarque’s death and what it means for them.

But Combeferre manages a smile for him, begins in an undertone: “Every atom of me and every atom of you—”

The words are not meant for them, not for Selene and Grantaire, but they listen anyway, transfixed and broken, and Selene does not budge from Grantaire’s lap when he feels as though he needs another another bottle of wine.

They watch together as Combeferre and Courfeyrac’s fingers weave together as one, and the owl perched on the mantel behind Combeferre turns her head for a moment to stare at them, her eyes wide and unblinking and impassive as ever. It might be sympathy or disgust that directs her gaze—Grantaire does not know. His fingers clench tighter into Selene’s fur and tears his eyes away at last from Enjolras, and Selene shuts her ears and eyes against the heaviness of the two men in the corner, who will not stop speaking of forever.

…..

As he climbs the splintered stairs there is a growing warmth in his chest—a hand curled around his heart so tightly it hurts. A welcome sort of pain, a familiar and fond one, and better than the dulling of the senses, in which he usually excels. If he closes his eyes it’s like he is wrapped in his sheets, with soft hands curled around him and claws caught in his hair.

It is not hard to push through the National Guard. They aren’t expecting him, and assume he is useless, besides. And they are not wrong, not really.

Selene has been waiting for him, and Enjolras has, too. The man may have been surprised when Selene glided up the stairs and leapt into his arms—but he had known then that Grantaire would follow. Grantaire wonders if Selene’s nails dig deep though Enjolras’s shirt and into his shoulders, holding him to life and to here and to her, anchoring him in needle-sharp pain and droplets of blood. It’s what she would do for Grantaire—but then she might not have it in her to hurt Enjolras, not even for that new closeness while facing—

She does not move at Grantaire’s approach, but he can feel her purring stutter through his limbs and all the way out to his fingertips, into the very corners of his being, as Enjolras reaches for his hand. When their fingers twine together, they might even pretend they are inseparable.

Enjolras might be ready to be a martyr for France and for Dust—but his daemon is not. She stands before them, hackles raised, snarls and bares her teeth to the hounds and the wolves of the National Guardsmen.

_We’re fighting for you_ , she wants to wail, and does not, because her dignity is important, too. They would not listen, have not listened, anyway.

And then the first three bullets rip through Enjolras’s chest.

Grantaire had scoffed at Joly’s spyglass, never deigned to use it—but he had heard Jehan expound upon what they saw through it in verse: the waves of luscious gold slipping in the sky, how their daemons all glittered with it, and their own hands, too. He had glanced at his hands—large, stained with charcoal and claw marks—and did not believe it. Selene scoffed at him, in turn, butted her head against his palm in reprimand, and still Grantaire did not look.

“Your paintings are positively  _drenched_  in it, you know,” Selene told him when they arrived back at his room for the night, this time alone. As if she knew, although they had no spyglass to look through.

But as Alienor is snuffed out like a candle before his eyes and Enjolras slumps against the wall, he thinks he can see it: like fireworks, shining particles of Dust where a familiar fox had stood, and wonders if what Combeferre had said to Courfeyrac about atoms and the universe and _forever_  might be true, as well.

Two more shots ring out, and Grantaire feels himself fall to the floor, and he can’t hold onto to Enjolras’s limp hand anymore. Selene is at his side, and her fur is wet when she sighs into his touch. He wants to move, to press their faces together and feel her tears against his cheeks, but his body aches and when he exhales, her eyes shutter closed.


End file.
